{"id":17123,"date":"2022-04-13T01:32:15","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T01:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/?p=17123"},"modified":"2022-04-13T01:32:15","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T01:32:15","slug":"sitting-with-discomfort-eufemia-fantetti-on-her-life-and-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/?p=17123","title":{"rendered":"Sitting with discomfort: Eufemia Fantetti on her life and career"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finding and building passion for something can be easy. But that doesn\u2019t mean that taking it and honing it for it to grow will be easy as well. There will be good days and bad ones too. This woman knows that better than anyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

University of Guelph-Humber students who are into writing may have heard of Eufemia Fantetti. Eufemia Fantetti is a Creative Writing professor at UofGH and Fundamentals of Writing at Humber College. Outside of school, she is an author and teaches adult learners generative writing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a professor, students may have had her as an instructor, but don\u2019t know half of the story and it does not start easily.<\/span><\/p>\n

She was born an only child in Etobicoke, Toronto in the 1960s to Italian immigrant parents. Since she was in elementary school, she has loved the subject of writing and thought of it as an expression of her creativity. She received a typewriter when she was in the fourth grade. Fantetti was subjected to bullying because she spoke English with a little accent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fantetti said in an interview via Zoom that they chose to make fun of her because of her accent. \u201cThey treated me like I was less intelligent\u201d, Fantetti said.<\/span><\/p>\n

While her school life wasn\u2019t great, her home life wasn\u2019t either. Both her father and mother had a mental illness; her father had severe depression and anxiety and her mother had schizophrenia. Fantetti describes that time as \u201cscared and frustrating\u201d because it was hard watching her parents be in pain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She is a graduate of The Writer\u2019s Studio and has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t enjoy writing in school because she felt stressed out about all the assignments she was given and at times it felt more like a task.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t enjoy it as an undergrad. It was stressful. I didn\u2019t have the focus or attention to do creative writing. But you can get somewhere with it even if it\u2019s just a hobby.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo: Amazon<\/p><\/div>\n

Fantetti published her debut book titled <\/span>A Recipe for Disaster & Other Unlikely Tales of Love <\/span><\/i>in 2013. It was the runner<\/span> up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and won the F.G. Bressani Prize.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A Recipe for Disaster <\/span><\/i>tells the story of six characters going through love with different scenarios. Fantetti was inspired to write this book based on the connections between food and love.<\/span><\/p>\n

After getting her teaching as a second language certificate, Fantetti wanted to be a part of a lot of people\u2019s positive learning experience because of her own negative ones in elementary school. She started teaching after getting publications and also wanted to highlight the challenges someone has to think about when going into creative writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Fantetti teaches she hopes to inspire people to stay in touch with their \u201ccreative spark\u201d, as she says people don\u2019t focus enough on the arts<\/span>. <\/span>Fantetti takes what she\u2019s learned from being an author and implements it in her teaching.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI share examples from my own writing journey to show what I mean and to stress that good writing is a skill that one can keep learning and improving in. Making mistakes is a common part of the learning process and students should be encouraged in an educational environment,\u201d Fantetti said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Ruth Oudit, second year justice studies student at UofGH, was asked about what type of professor Fantetti is, she had this to say:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe offers her time, efforts, and incredible feedback to help her students thrive and cultivate their skills.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Advice Fantetti wished she had when starting out as an author is \u201cit’s a marathon not a sprint\u201d. That when something goes awry, it doesn’t ruin the consistency.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe inner critic is going to show up. It\u2019s going to be okay even on the days where it doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s coming together. Stay away from the voice of negativity,\u201d Fantetti said.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div><\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo: Amazon<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/span>Fantetti released her memoir, <\/span>My Father, Fortune-tellers & Me: A Memoir<\/span><\/i> in 2019. In the memoir, Fantetti writes about her struggles with living with her family. She wrote the memoir because she believed that she was not the only child to be subjected to experiences with mental illness. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I write about my parents, I\u2019m aware that I\u2019m destroying their privacy. It\u2019s my way to say that this really happened. I take the chaos of that experience and put it into something that\u2019s artful,\u201d Fantetti said.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was inspired by an ongoing discussion she\u2019s had with her father about fate versus free will; her family believes that life is predestined, but finds that belief to be \u201cdeeply problematic\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBelieving in destiny doesn’t take into account the generations of oppressive poverty and barriers to education and opportunity that my ancestors endured which contributed to forming that mindset,\u201d Fantetti said. \u201cIt’s deeply unsettling to live with the unpredictable. But it’s social determinants built and supported by human beings that influences the true course of our lives, not divine intervention.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n